MC: Callahan

by L. Ann Marie

  “If he’s so good why the fuck you training us?” the asshole says.

  Little Ben holds up his hand when I’m about to yell at this asswipe. He looks right at him. “You can go. I’ll let VP know to put you back on the Security rotation.”

  The Brother’s pissed. “Who the fuck are you to tell me to leave?”

  Little Ben puts his hand up again. I stand down. “I’m an Officer in this MC. I earned my cut through the training that you will never see. I ran Ops for your team last night. I am LB and I deserve more respect than I’m getting from you at the moment.”

  The moron swings at him. Little Ben has him on the floor with his knee in his back before the other Security even move. I’m happy to see they moved, but they moved slow. Little Ben looks up at them. “You need to work on that reaction time.”

  Me and Bob laugh. “I got him, LB.”

  He steps off the moron. “You not only lost your position on HS, you lost your job and your cut. I am an Officer in this MC and I shouldn’t have to prove myself to you or any other Brother. The Officers wouldn’t have agreed to my promotion unless I proved myself to them. I owe you nothing. Drop your cut and get out.”

  Moron looks at Bob. “He can’t do that!”

  Bob smiles at him. “He just did. You took a swing at an Officer. It’s a good thing he’s smarter and quicker. VP and Pres would have beat the shit out of you. Drop your cut.”

  Little Ben pulls his phone. “VP, S3 lost his cut.” He listens. “Took a swing at me.” He listens again and smiles. “Not even close. I put him down. Thanks, Dad.” He hangs up and looks at the shocked Brother. “He’s coming down for your cut.”

  The guy shrugs it off, letting it fall to the floor, making us all take in a breath. “Fuck that!” He walks down the hall. Little Ben picks it up, shaking his head. Asshole didn’t respect the cut anyway.

  Little Ben looks at the other Security partners. “Do you have a problem working with me?” They both shake their heads no. “Good.” He looks at Bob. “I got this. I know your schedule took a hit again.”

  Bob laughs. “Thanks, Brother, running Ops again tonight is fuckin’ with my coverage.” He slaps little Ben on the shoulder and leaves.

  Strapper smiles at him. “How did you get him down so fast?”

  Little Ben laughs. “That’s a different class. We’re working on aim today. I’ll work it out so we can get some time to do some extra training.” Strapper nods.

  “For me too. Can you set that up?” S2 says.

  “Yeah, maybe the rest of the partners would benefit from it,” little Ben says, looking at me.

  “Yeah, I think anything and everything we can give them is only going to strengthen HS. Let’s get to work,” I say, pulling Strapper three stalls away from little Ben.

  I give him pointers and let him work it out. He’s happy he moves up on the board. “Every day you practice. I don’t care if it’s five in the morning. You find time to get here and practice. Yeah?”

  He’s still on a high from moving up. “Yeah.”

  “Move two more spots and we’ll get Danny to run the ride and shoot with you,” I tell him as little Ben and S2 come over.

  “LP1 will run with me?” He looks shocked.

  Little Ben laughs. “He will. Tiny’s right, everything you learn will strengthen us as a Club. We’d be foolish to leave anything out. This is the first time Officers are training directly with potential HS. If you get training from the best you’ll be the best.” They nod at him with face splitting smiles.

  “Go get something to eat and meet us in the meeting room in an hour,” I tell them. When they walk away I pull little Ben into a one armed hug. “Fuckin’ proud of the way you handled yourself. Don’t ever take shit from Brothers.”

  He smiles up at me. “Pres told me how to handle them.”

  “Did good, son, with the asswipe and trainin’,” VP says from the wall.

  “Thanks, Dad. I need to get some lunch before we start. Do I have time?”

  “Danny’s got it in the meetin’ room. Brother’s fuckin’ crazy without food in him,” VP says, making us laugh. He really is.

  We run leads from two to eight and meet at the Club. Pres tells us how many we netted. Thank fuck there were no kids today. We have a beer with Pres and VP, watching little Ben and Jessie. The Security partners are talking to them about training and their schedules. Danny is having a good time fuckin’ with VP about giving the boys a beer and a whore. I finish mine and tell them I’m out. The boys follow me out, telling me they’ll ride home with me. Strapper follows us, then turns back at the gate. He’s got me thinking he’s going to work out. He’s not much younger than Rich. He’s willing to take direction from someone younger and he’s asking for more training.

  Pulling into the driveway, the kids come running. I’m glad I made it before they went to bed. I never got to see Ricky this morning. I work with Diego and talk with the other boys while they’re switching off showers. I spend time reading to Sandy and helping get the boys in bed. They’re so fuckin’ good it’s not like work you hate doing.

  Sheila comes to me and asks if she can invite a boy from Little Brothers over on Sunday. She’s acting shy about it. “Of course, I already told you it was okay. You don’t have to ask every time unless it’s so we have enough food.” She kisses my cheek and hugs me, then runs up the stairs.

  Nancy laughs. “Smart man.”

  “I need to talk to Ricky. I’ll meet you out front with a beer in half an hour.” I bend and kiss her, then go on the hunt for my oldest boy. I find him on the back porch with a book. “Hey, Little Brother, I need to talk to you. Nancy told me Pres ripped you a new one yesterday.”

  He closes the book and looks at me. “Yeah. We shouldn’t have been doing Ops behind his back.” He looks disappointed.

  “No, we shouldn’t have. That was on the Officers, not you. We all knew better but hid it thinking we could handle it. It turned out we needed our Brothers to have our back and they had no clue what the fuck they were dealing with. It was a shit position to put them in and there was no reason to do it like that.”

  “Why did we keep it hidden?” He asks the one fuckin’ question I would have never answered before.

  I take a deep breath and look at the yard. Danny told Rich, I can tell Ricky. “When I was a kid I went through what Diego did. A grown man raped me. I never wanted that to come out, never talked about it, never wanted to admit it. I still don’t, but this is important and will help you understand. I thought people would think less of me if they knew. It turns out it doesn’t even matter anymore. I was going to therapy when the boys did. I’m done now, unless something causes me to go back. The Ops we were doing is like a form of therapy. If we can help one kid it helps me. We have other Brothers that lived through it too. It helps knowing we can do this and make it better for someone else. We took it too far and took everyone with us. Pres was pissed. He dealt with me, VP, and Danny. We were the three that should have known better and dragged everyone else in it. I think he even got Rich. I’m not saying we were wrong for what we did, but Pres would have been behind us no questions asked and we didn’t give him that respect. We all deserved what we got. You kids didn’t know better, you followed us no questions asked. Pres had to make a point, letting you know he is Pres. You’re just lucky you’re kids and he won’t hit you.” I smile at him because it’s true.

  “Pres hit you? Sh—damn. Is that how Danny, Rich, and Steve got the bruises?” I nod. “How come you don’t have one?”

  I laugh. “I’m too big. He kicked me in the gut. Got a fuckin’ bruise too.” I lift my shirt. “No one can see it. He’s fuckin’ fast, hit us all in less than five seconds. None of us saw it coming.”

  “Wow, I wouldn’t think Pres would hit VP or even Danny. They could kill him.” He’s right but wrong.

  “Pres can hold his own, and when he’s pissed he can do more, but we were wrong. It’s not like we didn’t deserve it. We broke his trust. It fuckin’ nur
ses knowing we did wrong. Not one of us can be pissed he got his in on us. He could have taken our cuts, but he understood too. He’s the only one that knows what happened to me. He got why we did it, but he couldn’t let us think it could happen again. It felt worse knowing that we disappointed him, didn’t trust in him as our Pres. I never thought about what we did like that, but it’s exactly what we were doing.”

  “Ff..freakin’ hell. That does nurse. That’s how we felt too. He was pissed. Little Ben thought he was going to lose his cut too. He didn’t say it but I could see it. We all felt like crap. Little Ben said never again. We trust our President and if he ever screws up again we need to point it out. He took it all on, even though it was all of us. He even told Pres it was on him and we followed his order. I still felt like crap. Little Ben was taking it all when we all wanted to do it.”

  “Little Ben is a good leader for you, Little Brothers. Pres is a good leader for all of us. We wouldn’t be where we are now if it weren’t for Pres guiding us and putting the right people in the right jobs. He was born to lead. Our old President groomed him to do his job just like Pres is grooming Little Ben. We can’t get so caught up in ourselves that we forget how we got here, and Pres is how we got here.”

  “I get it.” He looks at me. He wants to say something. I wait. “What you went through, that made you a better man. It made you fight for kids like Diego. He couldn’t fight for himself. What they did to him, what they’re doing to all of them, is so wrong, no one should have to live through that. We need you. You’re so big and you know what to do, what the kids need. That’s important. Little Ben says we all use our strong in different ways, but together we’re powerful like the Big Brothers. I want to be like you, Tiny. I want to make sure kids never have to live through that again.”

  It takes me a minute. I swallow the lump in my throat and stand up. “I want that too, Ricky. More than anything. I want that too.”

  He stands and hugs me. “Brothers, always.”

  “Yeah.” I go back to Nancy at the front and put my arm around her. When she leans against me I hear paper crinkling. She sits up and pats my pocket, pulling out a tampon. “Fuckin’ kids.”

  She laughs. Fuckin’ women.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  One month later...

  Tiny

  I get to Security and go right in to the meeting room. Danny, Cloud, Bob, Driscoll, Bull, Chet, Sam, VP, little Ben, Patches, Allan, and Geek are already here. Our partners are not. I sit and listen to them talking about the kids going back to school. I’m thinking this is odd. We’ve been going out twice a week to pick up bidders or auctioneers and kids. The only Officers not here are Pres, Rich, and Digs.

  “Where are our partners?” I can’t hold it in.

  “Don’t know, we got a text to be here at ten. We don’t run Security, so we never know what’s going on,” Patches says with a smile, making everyone laugh.

  Pres comes in with Rich, Digs, and a smiling Jessie. Digs and Jessie sit. Pres walks the length of the table to the head then looks at us for a good thirty seconds. “Brothers, I have all the evaluations from the Security partners. According to you they are all ready to move into HS. Is there anyone that feels someone is not going to work out or something isn’t right with any of the Brothers we’ve been training?”

  I think about all of them, not getting a bad feeling from any that I’ve worked with. I shake my head no. Pres watches all of us then turns to VP. “No, even asked Jeremy.”

  He nods and looks at little Ben. “Jeremy has been in on the training me and Jessie ran. He met all of them. My question to him was about Family Security. S8 is the only one he didn’t like for Family Security. He didn’t give a reason.”

  VP looks surprised. Pres nods. “He doesn’t have a problem with S8 in HS. He didn’t give me a reason either. I asked only about HS. I’m glad you were more specific.”

  I nod, looking at little Ben. So am I, but I wonder why he isn’t good for the family. “What do we know about S8?” I ask Geek.

  It’s Digs that answers. “I looked when little Ben told me. He lost his family in an accident; it was a DUI.”

  Pres nods. “Makes sense. Good job, Little Ben. So we have a fortified HS team. More Brothers moving into Security and some changes coming to the Little Brothers Program.” I look around the table. Cloud and Jessie are smiling. “The Little Brothers will be taking on a VP, Jessie, and will vote on SAA and Security. I am told these positions will be filled by Ricky and Darren.” He looks around. Holy shit! Ricky will be an Officer in the Little Brothers. I hold my smile.

  “The Little Brothers have proven themselves and the new Officers will get Little Brother Officer cuts. Jessie thinks they need more experience before wearing an Officer’s cut and little Ben left it up to me. I don’t think the Brothers are ready to accept them right now, so I agree. They will have their bible added to the charter bible with a vote at Christmas. Do I have a nay on the Little Brothers bible, cut or appointing their own Officers?”

  No one says a word. “Patches, you will be relieved of overseeing the Little Brothers Program with the Kids Center. I know this is not a loss you’ll mourn.”

  Patches smiles. “They’ve been doing it themselves for almost a year now.” We laugh.

  “Little Ben will coordinate the Summer Program and any special events with you. Cloud, you are still supervising and working directly with their Officers. The Little Brothers will run their own programs, activities, and training. Geek, you are still overseeing IT Security. Little Ben and his Officers are to be treated with respect and acceptance by all Brothers. I’m confident that when they need it, they will ask for our input and help.” Little Ben throws him chin.

  “Now Security. The ten Brothers that were trained learned more in the month of training than the whole three month course. One on one we get the results we want. I don’t think it’s because they’re learning anything different, you’re explaining why to them, you give them different perspectives. You are Officers for a reason, the best of the best. Everyone has a different job but it’s all about the Brotherhood when you boil it down. You’re teaching them that. We need to continue training this way. I know some of you have too much shit to do at your regular jobs, but we’ve found two new IT experts, one ex admin assistant, and an ex food service manager. We have more experienced help. Tell me what you need and I’ll find you help.”

  VP clears his throat. “Want assistant doin fuckin’ paperwork.” The table explodes in laughter.

  Pres smiles. “Done! Anyone else?”

  “I like training, it’s different when it’s not ten Brothers. I see when my partner gets it or doesn’t. I was going to ask to keep doing it,” I tell him. Everyone agrees.

  “Good. Sunday at the picnic I want the HS patches and the new cuts for Little Brothers.” I nod. “Danny, what do you need to keep training going?” Considering they live together they never talk Club shit. Danny won’t say anything unless we’re in a group like this.

  “If John is going to keep running things he needs a raise. He’s spending a lot of time working for no extra pay.”

  “Get with Justin or Josh and give him a raise,” Pres says, looking around the table. “Does anyone else need help, time, anything?”

  Little Ben sits up. “Yeah, we need to get our money handled. I don’t know what my mom does, but we’ve been working for a while. Our money is sitting in the bank. Joey portions out pays, but we need more options now. It’s too much to just sit there.”

  Pres looks surprised. “Why didn’t you ask her?”

  “It’s Club business, you’re the only one that talks to her about it,” he says with a smile.

  “Fuckin’ kids. I’ll talk to her about working with your money. If she gets pissed at me it’s coming back to you,” Pres says, making VP and Danny laugh. Jess is scary with the money shit.

  “Anything or other help needed?” No one says anything. “Okay, your partners are at the shooting range. They will run Ops tonigh
t. We don’t have many leads, but they run the show. Jessie is with Rich on controls. You are bystanders unless you’re needed. Your partners are stepping up to the HS bikes for the first time; don’t give them too much shit about it. They don’t know they’ll be patched into HS Sunday. Don’t mention it. I have nothing else, so unless you do, let’s get to work.”

  We all stand. I grab Jessie in a hug. “You and little Ben have had each other’s back from the first day. I’m proud to see you still do. I’m proud of you, Jessie.” He hugs me back then throws chin. Danny hugs him, then Cloud, then Rich.

  We text our partners, then watch them get their new bikes. It’s funny. Every single one of them is speechless, caressing the seats and checking them out. Their call numbers are on the back of the seats. They look at us to see if we’re fuckin’ with them. I throw Strapper his helmet and get on my bike. “Shit to do, you’re in charge tonight.” This is the first time he’s had the HS helmet; they usually have ear pieces. He checks in like a pro and we start our Op.

  Running twelve to four, we net a new kid and four bidders. The auctioneer was gone. There is less and less every time. I’m not sure if we’re shutting them down or they’re getting smarter. I like to think we’re shutting them down. At the Club Pres tells the Brothers how we did. Another kid was sent home. Paul showed up himself today to take care of the media. The girl is the daughter of a senator. The Brothers cheer and drink. Our Partners are all in high spirits. I sit next to Danny. “Where’s VP?” I ask him.

  “Jess needed him for something. He went straight home.” He looks concerned.

  “Her meds still working?” I hope it’s not the meds again.

  “I think so. She hasn’t said anything to me. She went to Boston today. I hope they’re still working.” He still looks concerned. He’s close to his sister. I would think she would tell him if she had a problem.

  “You want to get out of here?” I ask. Maybe a ride would clear his head.